Auto Light and its 96,000 dealers bring you Mr. J. Carroll Nash.
In tonight's presentation of...
Suspense.
Tonight, Auto Light presents a story about buried treasure, a real buried treasure and
a curse, a tale we call The Treasure Chest of Don Jose, starring Mr. J. Carroll Nash.
Hey, Hap, what are you doing?
Well, getting a fast start with my Auto Light stay full battery, Harlow.
Ah, you bet, fast and dependable.
And best of all, that Auto Light stay full needs water only three times a year in normal
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I know why, Harlow.
Sure you do, Hap.
It's because the Auto Light stay full has over three times the liquid reserve of batteries
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Right, Harlow.
So friends, visit your nearby Auto Light battery dealer soon.
He services all makes of batteries and has an Auto Light stay full for your car if a
replacement is needed.
To quickly learn his location, just phone Western Union by number...
And ask me, Operator 25, and I'll gladly tell you the location of your nearest Auto Light
battery dealer.
And remember, from bumper to tail light, you're always right with Auto Light.
And now with The Treasure Chest of Don Jose and the performance of Mr. J. Carroll Nash,
Auto Light hopes once again to keep you in suspense.
This is not a pretty story.
There is blood in it, the blood of men and women.
There is a curse in it and gold.
But it is a funny story.
It is a joke, a great joke I cannot laugh at.
It is a joke on me.
In matters of this sort, secrecy is of the most importance.
In matters of this sort, no man is your friend.
Once I had a friend.
We lived together in my little house on Black Cay down in the Gulf of Mexico.
But then the hurricane struck and everything was different.
The wind blew for two nights and a day and when the waves piled up on the cay and swept
away the house, it was my friend Pedro who dragged me away unconscious and lashed me
to a ring bolt on our little dock and saved my life.
Next day the sun was shining again, but there was nothing left on my little island.
The splintered planks that once had been the house of my father were scattered among the
stripped palm trees and even the big chimney that was built by my great grandfather was
a pile of broken bricks.
There was nothing but blue sea and a bright sun and heaviness in my heart.
Even the chimney.
What would you expect from such a wind?
Ay, my friend.
So now at last the curse of the Gasparillas has fallen on you.
Curse?
You speak foolishness.
It was a hurricane.
So it was, but a hurricane sent especially to destroy you.
You cannot believe that silly tale.
Did not your father perish from a bolt of lightning that struck him from a cloudless
sky?
The doctor said it was a heart attack.
And your grandfather pulled into the sea by a giant octopus.
He was washed overboard during a squall.
And all because of his father Don Jose, the king of the pirates, and the curse put upon
him and all the Gasparillas by the beautiful Dona Margarita who preferred death.
Oh, you frat like a schoolboy, you who have never been one day to school.
Come, come, we will clear up this mess and build a house over again.
You should know that I endured a certain local notoriety since I bore the same name and was
the great-great-grandson of Don Jose Gasparilla, one of the last and one of the fiercest of
the pirates of the Spanish main.
This was much less interest and concern to me than it was to my friends and acquaintances
among the Florida Keys.
Neither my father nor his father before him had ever profited by a single doubloon from
the legendary treasure of our pirate forebear.
As to the curse pronounced on Don Jose by the proud and virtuous Dona Margarita, I gave
it as little credence as I did the recurrent tales of Gasparilla's buried treasure.
But that was before Pedro and I set about clearing up the hurricane's mess.
We were stacking brick from the Demala's chimney when Pedro made a discovery.
Jose, look at this.
What is it?
Seems to be a box, little iron box, the size and shape of a brick.
Let me see it.
There was a lot there but it's rusted away.
Hand me that pinch bar.
There's a paper inside.
Yes, it's very old.
What does it say Jose?
Oh nothing, it's just an old paper.
Looks like a...
Looks like a poem.
Yes, yes.
I remember now.
It is a nursery rhyme from my father and then he copied it for me when I was a little boy.
But what's he doing in this old iron box?
Oh, I must have hidden it away once when I was playing.
Well, well amigo, come.
We shall get back to work.
It was a lucky thing Pedro could not read.
Nursery rhyme.
That rotting piece of parchment said, on Dog Buddies Island you could fare worse if dare
you will Don Jose's curse.
For there, three and thirty yards south-southeast of the Rocky Guards, you'll find a pleasantly
fulsome measure of Gasparia's earthly treasure.
There could be no question about it.
Here was at last a tangible clue to the hidden goal of my ancestor.
It was mine if I could find it.
And why should I share it with anyone, even Pedro?
I was the rightful heir and I would claim it all.
So that night I took our only boat and rode to the mainland.
I spent two days in the public library in Key West searching the old charts before I
found Dog Buddies Island.
It was a tiny sand spit near the tip of Cape Cod.
I withdrew all of my money from the bank, bought a suit of city clothes and an airplane
ticket north.
And the next day I was standing on a cold, windy Massachusetts beach talking to a suspicious
real estate agent.
No sir, I ain't heard this called Dog Buddies Island since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
Where'd you hear it called Dog Buddies Island?
Well, I really don't know.
Some friend of mine down south maybe.
Well, it's called Sprague Spit now.
Ever since old Captain Sprague bought her up.
Of course, she always was connected with the mainland at low tide.
You can see the sandbar over yonder.
Yes, yes, I see her.
Now about the house.
Well, there she is, just above that point of rocks.
Just a summer cottage.
Too dang uncomfortable this time of the year.
Well, it looks all right to me.
I can find you something heapsite better in town.
Got a nice little house just back of a gas station.
Well, I'm looking for solitude.
You'll find plenty of that out here.
Ain't a neighbor more than a mile and a half.
That point of rocks, is that the only one on the island?
Yeah.
Pirate's Point, folks call it hereabouts.
A fella says the buccaneers used to put in here for water in the old days.
Me, I don't put much stock in them stories myself.
Eh, you sure you want to rent this place?
It is just what I am looking for.
I wish you wouldn't.
It said there's a curse on it.
I wish you wouldn't.
It was perfect, my little rented cottage on the beach.
Quiet, secluded, and yet within view of that rocky point, which must be the same one that
Jose called the Rocky Guards.
There was a stack of firewood beside the kitchen door, and in a shed back of the house there
was even a long handle shovel.
A most fortunate circumstance, since I did not want to create any suspicion in town by
purchasing one.
I can tell you I scarcely slept that first night.
So great was my eagerness to be up in the morning, pace the three and thirty yards south-southeast
of the Rocky Guards, and begin digging for my treasure.
Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two.
Morning.
Oh, oh, good morning.
Looks like it's going to be a nice day.
Yes, yes it does.
Going to do some digging?
I beg your pardon?
I see you've got a shovel.
Looks like you're going to do some digging.
Oh, yes, yes, clams.
I'm going to dig for clams.
No clams in the surf.
Oh, there aren't?
No.
Find them on the bay side.
Oh, then I'll look over there.
Don't dig them with a shovel.
Got to use a rake.
Oh, is that so?
Yeah.
It's too late now, anyway.
Tides coming in.
Another low tide at five this afternoon.
Oh, I didn't know.
I'm a stranger here.
Yeah, I know.
Heard you'd rented the Davis place.
I'm chief of police of Quikasset.
Oh, anything wrong?
No.
Town limits come all the way out here, though.
Going to stay here long?
I don't know.
A few weeks.
Maybe all winter.
Are you a writing fellow?
No.
Painting fellow?
No.
Just taking a vacation?
Yes, yes.
You might call it that.
Beats me.
Well, nice to have this talk with you.
Everything you need in the way of police protection is let me know.
He couldn't know.
How could he know?
Nobody knew about the treasure clue but me.
Yet he seemed so suspicious and they asked me so many questions.
Well, I went back to the house set by the window until he was out of sight up the beach.
But by that time the tide had come in and the treasure was buried by the ocean.
So I waited until five o'clock when the tide was low and then carrying a gasoline lantern
I paced off the 33 yard south southeast of the Rocky Guards and set to work.
Although the evening was chilled with a brisk breeze blowing in from the sea, I soon had
shed my coat and was dripping with perspiration.
I lost all track of time and place and my own identity.
I was a machine attacking the wet sliding sand with huge bites of my shovel, widening
the hole as it grew deeper until my lantern threw long shadows across the opening that
had now become large enough for a coffin.
Then my shovel hit something solid.
I reached for my lantern and there under its lifeless green glare was a section of rotting
wood.
I shoveled wet sand to one side.
There was a rusted iron strap.
I had found it.
An iron bound chest.
The treasure chest of Don Jose Gasparilla.
It was almost too much to bear.
Suddenly my dampened shirt chilled me and I was seized with a fit of shivering.
Then I began crying like a frightened child.
How long I crouched there in this agony of relief and joy I cannot tell but suddenly
above the sound of my own sobs and the pounding surf and the sighing wind I heard voices.
Who came now to violate my supreme moment?
Who now threatened to deprive me of what was rightfully mine?
I turned the lantern out, scrambled from the hole.
A few yards away I could see the beam of a flashlight slowly approaching.
I ran, hid behind a ledge of rocks, my heart drumming in my ears, my held breath screaming
in my tightened throat, trying to listen, trying to see.
What were they doing?
Did they know?
At last it was quiet.
I watched their light as they made their way across the island toward the bay.
And then after a long time I heard the cough of a motorboat.
And I waited until the sound of the receding motor was lost in the sighing wind and the
hiss of the nearby surf.
Then I lit my lantern and went back to my diggings.
The hole, the hole it was half filled and suddenly my terror turned to rage.
What, what had they done?
I began digging savagely.
But almost at once my shovel hit something, something that was softer than the chest and
yielded to the pressure.
I seized my lantern, crouched over for a closer examination and found myself looking into the
still, open and vacantly staring eyes of a corpse.
Radio Light is bringing you Mr. J. Carroll Nash in the treasure chest of Don José.
Tonight's production in radio's outstanding theater of thrills, Sal's Spence.
J. Harlow, wait a minute.
Do you mean everyone?
Everyone hap.
Positive?
Positive hap.
Every positive plate in the Auto Light Stay Full battery is protected by fiberglass retaining
mats to reduce shedding and flaking and give longer life as proved by tests conducted according
to accepted life cycle standards.
All that plus, eh Harlow?
Plus the fact that the famous Auto Light Stay Full needs water only three times a year in
normal car use.
Yes, the Auto Light Stay Full needs water only three times a year in normal car use.
So friends, visit your nearest Auto Light battery dealer and ask him about an Auto Light
Stay Full battery for your car if a replacement is needed.
He services all makes of batteries and he's conveniently located.
To quickly learn his address, just call Western Union by number.
And ask for me, operator 25.
I'll gladly tell you the name and location of your nearest Auto Light battery dealer.
Where you can get your Auto Light Stay Full battery, the battery that needs water only
three times a year in normal car use.
And remember from bumper to tail light, you're always right with Auto Light.
And now, Auto Light brings back to our Hollywood sound stage, Mr. J. Carroll Nash in Elliot
Lewis's production of The Treasure Chest of Don Jose.
A tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense!
For a moment as I stared into the open eyes of the corpse, I had a strange feeling that
he was one of Don Jose Gasparrio's men buried with the treasure chest to guard it through
eternity.
But this was ridiculous.
The man was only recently dead, no 100 year old skeleton.
He was young and well dressed, yet he stood between me and my treasure.
Was this then the curse laid upon Don Jose come to rest at my feet?
With the greatest effort, I covered the grizzly garden of my fortune.
By then it must have been close to midnight.
The tide was coming in.
I dragged myself back to the house tormented by a thousand anxieties.
Sometime toward dawn I must have fallen asleep.
For the next thing I knew it was past noon and someone was pounding on my door.
Hey!
Anybody home?
Just, just a minute.
I'm coming.
Oh, it's you, Chief.
Good morning.
Afternoon now.
What?
I'm sorry, I was sleeping.
Thought you was dead.
Dead?
Took long enough to waken you.
Excuse me, I had insomnia most of the night.
Insomnia, huh?
You mean you was awake?
Yes.
Most of the night, you say?
Why, why yes.
Hear anything peculiar out here?
No, no, no.
What do you mean?
Prowlers or such.
Why should anyone be prowling out here?
Didn't say there was.
I asked if you heard anyone.
No, no, no, I didn't.
Got a check.
It's been in the town limit.
Why?
Is anything the matter?
Yeah, kidnapping.
Murder, maybe.
What?
Yeah.
Ain't you heard it on the radio?
I haven't got a radio.
Sure, great consolation for a man living alone.
What, what, what, what happened?
Tell me.
Young Harvard fellow, sinful rich, his father paid the ransom $20,000.
But the kidnappers didn't deliver the boy.
Got a three-state alarm out for him.
Think they're on the Cape somewheres?
Well, just checking.
What makes you think they come out here?
I don't know.
Hunched partly, partly because somebody borrowed one of Jen Chantry's boats last night.
Found a blood stain in the cockpit this morning.
Didn't see him.
No, no, I told you I didn't.
Yeah, so you did.
Well, we'll catch them, course, if they're on the Cape.
Sooner or later, we'll catch them.
Ransom money's in small bills, all marked.
They'll get hungry sooner or later and spend some.
Besides, we've got a pretty good description of them.
Let me know if you see or hear anything.
Yes, yes, of course.
I'll be glad to.
Yeah, just checking.
Now there was no time to lose.
I had already missed one low tide.
I had to get my gold and get it away from this island of suspicion and debt.
I waited until five o'clock and returned to my diggings.
The low, scurrying clouds packed the sand with sudden gusts of icy rain.
There was little likelihood that I would have one welcome visitors on such a forbidding
evening.
I quickly disinterred the body from my treasure hole.
Unquestionably, he was the kidnapped victim, a young man dressed in flannel slacks and
saddle shoes of a college boy.
I dragged him to one side, out of sight behind some rocks where I couldn't see his empty
death stare.
Then I went back to my digging.
By seven o'clock, I had uncovered the chest and was prepared to lift it out of its grave.
The curse?
No, no, no, no.
The curse for here was the treasure and it was mine.
I better give you a hand with that.
What?
He wants to know, do you need a hand with that?
Who are you?
What are you doing here?
How did you get here?
Low tide.
I walked.
Get out of the hole, Pop.
Answer me.
Help Pop out of the hole.
Yeah.
Come on, Pop.
All right, where is it?
What?
It's gone.
He got rid of it.
Get him out of there.
Okay, Pop, come on.
No, no, let me go, please.
Let me go.
Where is it, Pop?
What did you do with him?
Do?
Where's the kid?
There.
I put him there.
Steve?
Yeah.
He's here.
What are you trying to do, Pop?
Why did you move him?
What's he trying to do?
He... he was...
Was?
Was what?
Look in the hole.
Yeah.
No, no, no, don't.
Don't move him.
He's not moving.
No, no, don't.
There's a box in here.
That's why you moved him, Pop, to get to the box.
Give me a hand with this.
Leave it alone.
It's mine.
Don't touch it.
Shut up.
Yeah.
Sit.
What do you got, Pop?
Treasure?
Buried treasure?
Don't laugh.
Maybe that's what it is.
Let's get it out of there.
Leave it alone.
I told you to shut up.
All right, Steve, let's get it out of there.
There it was, my treasure, in the sand-covered iron-bound box.
Only it wasn't mine.
Not while these two hoodlums stood over me with clenched fists and poised boots.
At gun's point, they made me grasp one of the rusty handles, and one of them lifted
the other, and they forced me to help carry it toward the house.
My treasure.
It was mine, and nobody could take it from me now.
I must find a way to rescue it.
When we got inside the house, they yanked open the chest and emptied one of the canvas
sacks, its contents cascading onto the table in a golden stream of doubloons.
Well, what do you know?
Gold.
It's mine.
It belongs to me.
It's my inheritance.
Yeah, I know, Pop.
Only you're going to pay a high inheritance tax, 100%.
Okay, now, Pop, I'll tell you what we're going to do.
My friend and me are in a little trouble, and you're going to give us a hand, aren't
you, Pop?
What are you talking about?
Go away.
Leave me alone.
That's just what we're going to do.
We're leaving, and we're taking that bright, shiny stuff with us.
The treasure is mine.
But we're going to be fair, more than fair.
We're going to give you $20,000 in nice, up-to-date American money.
How do we know?
Maybe that junk of yours ain't worth half that much.
Your money's marked.
It's ransom money.
That's beside the point.
This dough of yours won't work in a cigarette machine, you know.
You're going to have to go to a lot of trouble to cash it.
What was that?
When the blue opens, rain like the devil outside.
Better get started.
No, no, no, no.
I won't let you.
Just take it easy, old man.
You got no complaints.
You're 20 grand ahead of the game.
Look at this, Jeff.
Wind blew a piece of driftwood through the window.
Come on, we got to get out of here.
All right, let's go.
Grab one end of that chair.
Wait a minute, you forgetting something?
What?
The sack fell on the table.
Oh, yeah.
Here, Pop.
Here's one for you as a souvenir.
Come on, come on, Jeff.
We got to get this thing across the sand spit before the tide comes in.
Yeah, we're all finished here.
So long, Pop.
Oh, my treasure, my treasure.
Thanks, Pop.
Thanks a million.
And they were gone, walking slowly across the dunes with their heavy burden.
I watched them, unaware of the sheets of rain driving through the open door of the cottage,
unaware that the house itself was shuddering from the impact of the storm,
unaware that the wind had shifted from northeast to southeast.
And suddenly I became conscious of my great danger.
The thin frame cottage was creaking and shaking.
It was shaking from the relentless wind, and the sound of the storms had a familiar tone,
a tone I had heard once before, and then I realized the wind had shifted.
I realized this was no ordinary storm.
This was a hurricane.
Outside, the waves were piling up, coming closer and closer to the cottage.
Over my head, there was an ominous crunching, ripping, and the eaves.
I could see the great daylight through the eaves.
The roof would blow loose any moment.
I threw myself against the kitchen door and, crouching low, ran away from the sea.
Down behind the shelter of a high dune,
I stumbled against the cranberry bush and fell flat, spread eagles on the sand.
And suddenly, suddenly the wind stopped, the rain stopped, and there was the calm of death.
It was the center of the hurricane, the eye, the moment of respite before the final fury of the storm.
And I remembered the curse and wished aloud for its fulfillment.
And there was no sound but the booming of the furious surf.
And then, then there seemed to be a distant human cry.
I looked, I looked toward the rocky gods.
Far in the distance, for an instant, I could see the tiny, struggling figures of my tormentors.
And then a giant wave crashed down on them, and they, and the spit, disappeared in boiling, angry water.
And the wet heavens descended again, hurled upon me by the tail of the hurricane.
I woke with a light in my eyes, a light brighter and bigger and closer than the sun.
And I heard a voice.
You all right, Mr. Gaspar?
Who?
It's me, Tris Weatherby.
Got out here as soon as I could.
We was worried about you. Out here with no radio, you couldn't get the storm warnings.
You come up so fast, wasn't time to get you off.
Oh, thanks. That's very kind of you.
Lucky you got out of the house.
Why?
Ain't there no more.
The ocean came plumb through, carried the house right out into the bay, made two islands out of spreg spit.
The house is gone?
Not a stick of it left. Ten-foot channel where it stood.
Storms play funny tricks. That, uh, kidnappin' I told you about.
Tris, what about it?
Found three bodies out near those rocks, the kidnappers and their victim.
What do you know about that?
Nothing at all.
It is a very funny story, no?
But I cannot laugh.
The joke is on me.
You don't believe me?
But look, here is the gold doubloon.
All that is left of the treasure chest of Danosay.
Yet I know this to be true.
There is a treasure. I saw it, held it.
And that treasure still exists.
Only now there is no map.
But I can tell you, in the rocky surf near the two islands called Spreg Spit,
if you will dare to curse, is the treasure chest of Danosay.
Suspense!
The story of a true buried treasure presented by Auto Light.
Tonight's star, Mr. J. Carroll Nash.
This is Harlow Wilcox speaking for Auto Light,
world's largest independent manufacturer of automotive electrical equipment.
Auto Light is proud to serve the greatest names in the industry.
That's why, during the early months of 1952,
the Auto Light family is saluting the leading car manufacturers
who use Auto Light products as original equipment.
Our Auto Light family is a big family,
and it's made up of nearly 30,000 men and women in Auto Light plants
from coast to coast and in many foreign countries.
Our family is also made up of more than 18,000 people
who have invested a portion of their savings in Auto Light,
as well as 96,000 Auto Light distributors and dealers in the United States
and thousands more in Canada and throughout the world.
Our Auto Light family will salute the Chrysler Division of Chrysler Corporation
on the next Auto Light Suspense television program.
If you live in a television area, check the day and time of Suspense on television
so that you will be sure to see this show.
And remember, be with us next week for another thrilling Auto Light Suspense program on radio.
[♪upbeat music playing
Next week on Suspense, our star will be Mr. James Mason
in the story of the terrifying escape of a dying man,
an adaptation of Odd Man Out.
In weeks to come, we shall also present Miss Barbara Stanwyck,
Mr. Richard Widmark, and Mr. Herbert Marshall
all on Suspense.
Suspense is produced and directed by Elliot Lewis
with music composed by Lucian Morrowick and conducted by Lud Gluskin.
The treasure chest of Don José was written for Suspense by Christopher Anthony.
Featured in the cast were Anthony Barrett, Charles Seale, Joseph Kearns, and Clayton Post.
J. Carroll Nash has just completed Clash by Night, a Jerry Wald Norman Krasnoprudy for RKO.
And remember next week on Suspense, Mr. James Mason in an adaptation of Odd Man Out.
This is Harlow Wilcox again to ask if you have time to send a dime.
Your contribution to the March of Dimes will help a polio victim to walk again.
Send your dimes or dollars to your local March of Dimes headquarters.
Won't you join the March of Dimes tonight?
This is the CBS Radio Network.